Posts Tagged ‘Jerusalem’

I had my view of Franklin Delano Roosevelt radically changed by my reading of the Burton Folsom Jr. book, New Deal Or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America. I challenge anyone who adores FDR to read that thoroughly documented work. Another book to read is Amity Schlaes’ The Forgotten Man. You end up being incredibly angry and deeply saddened at the same time as a foolish American people wickedly kept returning to the policies of a wicked man who trapped America into the misery of a terrible depression that lasted fully seven years longer than it should have.

We also find that he may have – at least if you believe in a just and righteous God – kept America trapped in a bloody world war that resulted in the deaths of over 400,000 Americans.

If you believe in God – as I do – I think it is a valid assertion that God would have given America swift victory had we tried to help God’s people the Jews instead of what we did under a despicable and callous FDR.

The question as to why black people have in recent years chosen to celebrate and support the party that put their ancestors in the chains of slavery, fought a vicious Civil War to keep them in those chains, invented the Ku Klux Klan as the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party to keep blacks who had been freed by Republicans in subjugation, resegregated blacks under the tyranny of “the father of the modern progressive movement” also known as the racist white supremacist Woodrow Wilson, was still so racist in 1924 that the Democratic National Convention of that year was called “Klanbake,” allowed black men to go untreated with syphilis so researchers could study the progression of the disease (the Tuskegee Experiment) throughout the entire FDR presidency, was largely THE party of racist discrimination through the 1950s, and then only passed the Civil Rights laws with the overwhelming supporting votes of Republicans, is a mystery that I will not attempt to explain. I have no idea why black people as a culture allowed Democrats who had subjected them to one form of plantation allowed Democrats to bait and switch them into a different form of plantation (the welfare plantation of institutional generational dependency).

I will only point out that after reading about the incredible harm a wicked and cynical president did to the American economy out of bitter partisan ideology, I believed that FDR is burning in hell today.

Now, having read this piece by an expert on the Holocaust, I am certain of it (this piece was originally filed under the LA Times title, “FDR’s troubling view of Jews”):

In May 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the White House. It was 17 months after Pearl Harbor and a little more than a year before D-Day. The two Allied leaders reviewed the war effort to date and exchanged thoughts on their plans for the postwar era. At one point in the discussion, FDR offered what he called “the best way to settle the Jewish question.”

Vice President Henry Wallace, who noted the conversation in his diary, said Roosevelt spoke approvingly of a plan (recommended by geographer and Johns Hopkins University President Isaiah Bowman) “to spread the Jews thin all over the world.” The diary entry adds: “The president said he had tried this out in [Meriwether] County, Georgia [where Roosevelt lived in the 1920s] and at Hyde Park on the basis of adding four or five Jewish families at each place. He claimed that the local population would have no objection if there were no more than that.”

Roosevelt’s “best way” remark is condescending and distasteful, and coming from anyone else it would probably be regarded as anti-Semitism. But more than that, FDR’s support for “spreading the Jews thin” may hold the key to understanding a subject that has been at the center of controversy for decades: the American government’s tepid response to the Holocaust.

Here’s the paradox. The U.S. immigration system severely limited the number of German Jews admitted during the Nazi years to about 26,000 annually — but even that quota was less than 25% filled during most of the Hitler era, because the Roosevelt administration piled on so many extra requirements for would-be immigrants. For example, starting in 1941, merely leaving behind a close relative in Europe would be enough to disqualify an applicant — on the absurd assumption that the Nazis could threaten the relative and thereby force the immigrant into spying for Hitler.

Why did the administration actively seek to discourage and disqualify Jewish refugees from coming to the United States? Why didn’t the president quietly tell his State Department (which administered the immigration system) to fill the quotas for Germany and Axis-occupied countries to the legal limit? That alone could have saved 190,000 lives. It would not have required a fight with Congress or the anti-immigration forces; it would have involved minimal political risk to the president.

Every president’s policy decisions are shaped by a variety of factors, some political, some personal. In Roosevelt’s case, a pattern of private remarks about Jews, some of which I recently discovered at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem and from other sources, may be significant.

In 1923, as a member of the Harvard board of directors, Roosevelt decided there were too many Jewish students at the college and helped institute a quota to limit the number admitted. In 1938, he privately suggested that Jews in Poland were dominating the economy and were therefore to blame for provoking anti-Semitism there. In 1941, he remarked at a Cabinet meeting that there were too many Jews among federal employees in Oregon. In 1943, he told government officials in Allied-liberated North Africa that the number of local Jews in various professions “should be definitely limited” so as to “eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany.”

There is evidence of other troubling private remarks by FDR too, including dismissing pleas for Jewish refugees as “Jewish wailing” and “sob stuff”; expressing (to a senator ) his pride that “there is no Jewish blood in our veins”; and characterizing a tax maneuver by a Jewish newspaper publisher as “a dirty Jewish trick.” But the most common theme in Roosevelt’s private statements about Jews has to do with his perception that they were “overcrowding” many professions and exercising undue influence.

This attitude dovetails with what is known about FDR’s views regarding immigrants in general and Asian immigrants in particular.

In one 1920 interview, he complained about immigrants “crowding” into the cities and said “the remedy for this should be the distribution of aliens in various parts of the country.” In a series of articles for the Macon (Ga.) Daily Telegraph and for Asia magazine in the 1920s, he warned against granting citizenship to “non-assimilable immigrants” and opposed Japanese immigration on the grounds that “mingling Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results.” He recommended that future immigration should be limited to those who had “blood of the right sort.”

FDR’s decision to imprison thousands of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II was consistent with his perception of Asians as having innate racial characteristics that made them untrustworthy. Likewise, he apparently viewed with disdain what he seemed to regard as the innate characteristics of Jews. Admitting significant numbers of Jewish or Asian immigrants did not fit comfortably in FDR’s vision of America.

Other U.S. presidents have made their share of unfriendly remarks about Jews. A diary kept by Harry Truman included statements such as “The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish.” Richard Nixon’s denunciations of Jews as “very aggressive and obnoxious” were belatedly revealed in tapes of Oval Office conversations.

But the revelation of Franklin Roosevelt’s sentiments will probably shock many people. After all, he led America in the war against Hitler. Moreover, Roosevelt’s public persona is anchored in his image as a liberal humanitarian, his claim to care about “the forgotten man,” the downtrodden, the mistreated. But none of that can change the record of his response to the Holocaust.

The observance of Holocaust Memorial Day begins Sunday night. It is the annual occasion to reflect on the Nazi genocide and the world’s response to it. In the case of the United States, it is sobering to consider that partly because of Roosevelt’s private prejudices, innocent people who could have been saved were instead abandoned.

Rafael Medoff is the founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington. His latest book is “FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith.”Medoff will speak Sunday at the Holocaust Memorial Day service at the Alpert Jewish Community Center in Long Beach.

I’m sorry. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was different from Adolf Hitler HOW, exactly? Certainly not in their vile racism or their contempt for Jews.

FDR has the documented blood of an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM of 190,000 Jews on his hands. And given that he should have done far, far more than the “absolute minimum” to help desperate people who were condemned to miserable deaths because he wouldn’t lift a finger to help them, that number of Jews whose blood FDR has on his hands soars much the way Obama’s debt has soared.

FDR wanted to “eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany.” The rat bastard son of a bitch actually AGREED WITH HITLER!!!

That’s one of the reasons every single American should be nauseated by this image that celebrated both the wicked Obama and his wicked predecessor in massive socialism and rabid anti-Semitism:

At the heart of the Democrat Party is a profound hatred for God, for the Judeo-Christian worldview and for the people – both Jew and Christian alike – who follow the Word of God.

This is God damn America. And we’re going to reap the same godless disaster this time around that we faced the last time. Only this time – given the fact that this nation is more depraved than ever before – we are going to lose and lose big and lose everything.

And then Democrats will lead America into the worship of the Antichrist and the acceptance of the mark of the beast. Because that is the hellish abyss they have been pushing America toward for decades.

One wit in Wisconsin said it best: The Democrats voted against God before they voted for Him. Not that they actually DID vote for God, as you will see.

Yesterday the Democrat Party took a vote to adopt a new party platform that specifically purged language of God and Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

After that vote, Brett Bair, anchor of Fox News Special Report, had a bizarre interview with Dick Durbin.

I have seen the same look that was on Dick Durbin’s face three times in my life. Once was when I was a soldier and inadvertently cornered a large nasty rat during a training exercise; once was when I lived in Oregon and inadvertently cornered a possum when I was trying to take the trash to the curb; and once was when I was looking at trapped, cornered, vicious Dick Durbin trying to explain why Democrats had just purged language about God and Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol from its platform:

Notice that Brett Bair is merely trying to ask a VERY legitimate question: why did you remove that language from your platform? And notice that the rabid freaking rodent in Durbin comes out and he not only refuses to EVER answer the question in spite of being REPEATEDLY asked, but demonizes Fox News and Brett Bair personally merely for daring to ASK the question.

But it quickly became apparent to anyone who WASN’T crawling with demons that what the Democrats had just done to purge God and kick Israel to the curb was a mega-giant loser.

In a bizarre display of deceit and total inability to exercise anything even remotely CLOSEto leadership, the Democrat National Convention gave us the following utterly pathetic display:

Did it sound to you in the video like the “ayes” won by the required two-thirds margin? If it did I’ve got four words for you: “Stupid Idiot Deaf Liar.” If anything, the “no” vote was LOUDER and there was no freaking way the voice vote carried. But the Democrats have always been a party of fascists masquerading as populists and so the leadership just did whatever the hell it wanted to do – which was try to sweep a real disgrace under the rug as quickly as possible.

This was just bizarre on every single level under the sun. This is the party you want leading America? Seriously? The party of evil clueless clowns and rabid fools?

Continuing to press, Keilar noted that this seemed to be a change in policy from yesterday by the Obama campaign because they made it clear Tuesday that they stood by the platform with the controversial language regarding Jerusalem and the word “God” left out.

At the end of the interview, the segment switched back to CNN’s booth at the convention where Anderson Cooper said, “I just got to go to the panel with this. I mean, Debbie Wasserman Schultz said it wasn’t a change of language, there was no discord that we saw, and it was a two-thirds vote.

“And it was a technical oversight,” added David Gergen.

“I mean, that’s an alternate universe,” replied Cooper. […]

Cooper added a few moments later, “I just think from a reality standpoint, you can defend it as the head of the DNC, but to say flat out there was no discord is just not true.”

At that point, John King fabulously said, “If I had a follow-up question, it would be did she ever get away with the dog ate my homework?”

That led to laughter from all present making it clear that this panel was not buying the DNC chair’s explanation.

The question remains: if the Democrats AREN’T the Party of godless communism and hostility toward God’s chosen nation Israel, then why the hell did they remove it from the platform to begin with? I think you can tell by the vote that the answer is pretty straightforward: because most Democrats ARE “Democrats” – by which I mean, “Demonic Bureaucrats“.

“Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations,” Obama told CNN when asked whether Palestinians had no future claim to the city.

Obama has absolutely no regard for Israel or Jerusalem, and history proves it. If Obama gets reelected, you can count on him to force Israel to give up Jerusalem for the pseudo-peace he will force Israel to accept so we can have Armageddon just like the God the Democrats purged from their platform told us we would have.

At least ABC had the integrity to reveal the abject hypocrisy of the Democrat Party on this. Charlie Rose repeatedly asked Senator Charles Schumer – who is THE Democrat authority on Israel and the Middle East – “What is the president’s position on Jerusalem?” And Schumer refused to answer (because the American people would not LIKE Obama’s answer):

The new platform has still purged the language denying the “right of return” and the rejection of the terrorist group Hamas as well as the issue of the 1967 borders. Any Israel-loving Jew or American who votes for the Democrat Party is an idiot or worse.

The Democrat Party is an evil, rabid, radical party. It is the party of God damn America. It has nothing to do with the Democrat Party that existed prior to the 1968 Democrat National Convention when the very radicals who now dominate it violently took it over.

Update: For the record, it was being circulated that Obama was the hero who courageously demanded that the God and Jerusalem language be put back into the DNC platform. The only problem with that is that it is an utter fabrication. In fact Obama saw the new language prior to its being put into the platform. So the real question becomes, “Why did Obama allow and approve the language to be taken out to begin with?”

The Party of God Damn America is moving full-steam ahead to worshiping the Antichrist and taking his mark on their hands or their foreheads so they can complete their descent into a vision of hell on earth:

The Democratic Party may be getting a fair amount of attention this week — and not only because the political movement is hosting its national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Another point of focus has already been the contents — or the lack thereof — present in the 2012 Democratic Party Platform.

Earlier today, we told you that the document fails to mention Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a proclamation that was previously touted by the party. And now, in an even more shocking revelation, CBN News is reporting that the Democrats have removed mentions of “God” from the document as well.

This is a departure from the past. In 2008, the platform read (emphasis added), “We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”

With the words “God-given” removed, the 2012 platform sticks to a more secular script: “We gather to reclaim the basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation on Earth – the simple principle that in America, hard work should pay off, responsibility should be rewarded, and each one of us should be able to go as far as our talent and drive take us.”

But, as CBN’s David Brody notes, the Democratic document isn’t entirely devoid of religious sentiment. A portion discusses the notion that faith has always “been a central part of the American story, and it has been a driving force of progress and justice throughout our history.”

Below, read the remainder of the Democratic platform’s views on faith:

“We know that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith and the countless acts of justice and mercy it inspires. Faith-based organizations will always be critical allies in meeting the challenges that face our nation and our world – from domestic and global poverty, to climate change and human trafficking.

People of faith and religious organizations do amazing work in communities across this country and the world, and we believe in lifting up and valuing that good work, and finding ways to support it where possible. We believe in constitutionally sound, evidence-based partnerships with faith-based and other non-profit organizations to serve those in need and advance our shared interests. There is no conflict between supporting faith-based institutions and respecting our Constitution, and a full commitment to both principles is essential for the continued flourishing of both faith and country.”

While faith communities being given credit for embracing “justice and mercy,” it’s quite odd to see that the word “God” — a central tenet in most areas of American life, including the political, is absent.

Egypt’s Islamists aim to install a global Islamic caliphate with its capital in Jerusalem, a radical Muslim preacher told thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in a clip released Monday.

“We can see how the dream of the Islamic caliphate is being realized, God willing, by Dr. Mohamed Mursi,” Safwat Higazi told thousands of Brotherhood supporters at a Cairo soccer stadium as Mursi – the movement’s presidential candidate – and other Brotherhood officials nodded in agreement.

“The capital of the caliphate – the capital of the United States of the Arabs – will be Jerusalem, God willing,” Higazi said. “Our capital shall not be in Cairo, Mecca or Medina,” he said, before leading the crowd in chants of “Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.”

Higazi is an unaffiliated Islamist who is barred from the United Kingdom for making statements endorsing terror attacks against Israelis. The clip, from Egypt’s Islamist-oriented Al-Nas television station, was aired last week and uploaded to YouTube on Monday by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Members of the crowd carried banners emblazoned with slogans related to next week’s “Nakba Day,” when Palestinians and other Arabs mourn Israel’s creation in 1948.

“Tomorrow, Mursi will liberate Gaza,” an unidentified man cheers in the video before leading the crowd in chants of “Allah Akbar.”

“Banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews,” the man repeats, accompanied by drumming. “Come on, you lovers of martyrdom, you are all Hamas… Forget about the whole world, forget about conferences. Brandish your weapons, say your prayers and pray to the Lord.”

Returning to the stage, Mursi vowed to pray in Jerusalem. “Yes, Jerusalem is our goal. We shall pray in Jerusalem, or die as martyrs on its threshold.”

Raymond Stock, an American translator and academic who spent two decades in Egypt, said the clip should come as a surprise to no one.

“This is what the Muslim Brotherhood really stands for: the extermination of Israel – and Jews everywhere – as well as the spread and control of radical Islam over the world,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

“How anyone can fail to see this boggles the mind – yet its denial is virtual dogma in the global mainstream media, US government and Western academia today,” said Stock, who has translated a number of books by the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz.

The Brotherhood won about half of Egypt’s parliamentary seats, but its main candidate Khairat al-Shater was disqualified last month from running for president and Mursi has struggled to win wide support.

Instead, the two front-runners are Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh – a former Brotherhood figure who has won the backing of a broad range of voters from liberals to Salafis – and Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister and Arab League chief.

A presidential election, which starts on May 23-24, will choose a replacement for Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in February last year.

Poll numbers released Monday by the state-run Al-Ahram Center show Moussa leading the field with 39%, followed by Abol Fotouh with 24%, former Mubarak premier Ahmed Shafiq with 17% and Mursi in fourth with just 7%.

Stock said Amr Moussa has a significant chance of replacing Mubarak.

“Many people want Islamist values but are afraid that Islamist control of the presidency in addition to parliament could be bad for tourism and foreign investment. Others simply like Moussa,” he said. “He is a radical nationalist with a pragmatic streak, and from a Western point of view is the best we can hope for now that Omar Suleiman has been excluded.”

“But we can’t rule out Mohamed Mursi yet – the Brotherhood machine is extremely formidable, and nearly everyone has underestimated them before,” he said, adding that “the Salafis remain wild cards, as ever.”

And now because of the most pathetic and most evil president in American history, we’ve got a president in Egypt claiming Jerusalem for the Islamic caliphate. Which is another way of saying because of Obama, we will have Armageddon.

God damn America, indeed, Rev. Wright. As Obama’s reverend and spiritual mentor for 23 years, you spoke as a prophet in telling us that the days that God would bless America were over.

P.S. Glenn Beck got a chance to openly mock the New York Times for its previous utter ridicule of him when he predicted that Egypt would end up in the Muslim Brotherhood’s win column a year and a half ago. Sean Hannity nailed this one, too. And conservatives knew this would happen from George Bush’s failed experiement with “democracy” in the Palestinian Authority – you know, the corrupt terrorist cesspool that ended up going to terrorist group Hamas. We predicted this would happen. But liberals are immune to history, immune to facts and immune to reality. For them it was “The Arab Spring is wonderful! You can smell the freedom in the air! Praise Obama! Praise him! Peace and unicorns float all around us!” And we were right and now the only thing stopping a total descent into terrorist hell and Armageddon for Egypt is the Western-trained military.

That’s what I said yesterday to a firefighter who was wearing a T-shirt that said, “9/11: We will never forget”: “Never forget? I’m still not over being completely pissed off yet.”

And I’m not.

A friend in church basically said that we should get past 9/11 the way we have largely gotten past the Pearl Harbor attack. The difference, I tried to correct him, was that a nation-state attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the U.S. rose up in vengeance and completely defeated that nation – bringing the same hell to the Japanese as the Japanese brought to us – and then transformed the defeated ruins into an ally.

That hasn’t happened yet with this virulent – and vicious – form of Islam. Nor can we truly expect it to ever happen. Because it wasn’t a nation-state that attacked us on 9/11; it was an ideology, a worldview, a religious system. Both the worldview and the millions who adhere to that worldview are not defeated. They continue to plot and to act. And until they truly ARE defeated, there can be no rest from our vigilance as we seek to defend our freedom.

We have responded to 9/11 in terms of military, political and economic actions. But at its core, 9/11 was a religious act. And we have never responded to the religion that attacked us and dealt with it on the terms of religion.

There are a couple of distinctions that I would like to make to those who compare Islamic terrorism to the Christian Crusades. After merely pointing out the historical fact that Muslims attacked and endangered the Christian Byzantine Empire first, and the emperor beseeched the Pope for assistance that in turn led to the Crusades. One has to wonder why the side that fought back should be blamed for the war.

The distinctions that I make go beyond arguing over what happened in the past and hit right at the present. Namely one, that the Qur’an demands violence in a way that the Christian Bible simply does not; and two, that Islam is an intrinsically political religion in a way that Christianity is not.

We all know of the passages that fundamentalist Muslims can recite to justify attacking the “infidels” of the West. I don’t feel any need to recite them. But Muslims point to a few passages in the Old Testament and say that Christians have the same problem with calls for divinely-sanctioned violence.

But the problem with that is that we don’t have a problem.

You see, there’s something called “The New Testament.” It is actually anticipated in the Old Testament:

31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” —Jeremiah 31:31-34

And this same Jesus, when Peter cut off the ear of a servant with a sword when the mob came to arrest Jesus, said, “Stop! No more of this!” (Luke 22:51). Jesus said, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).

There is a vast difference between Jesus and Muhammad. Where Muhammad was a man of violence who had been in more than thirty military campaigns in his life and who had another thirty planned at the time of his death, Jesus was not only a man of peace but the “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Given that Muhammad is the paradigm of Islam and that Jesus is the paradigm of Christianity, I argue that if you seek peace, it can ultimately be found only at the feet of the Prince of Peace.

Even other great inspirational figures representing entirely different religious systems have found this peace uniquely in the Person of Jesus. Take Gandhi:

Gandhi found the supreme example of satyagraha within Jesus Christ. [Satyagraha is a Sanskrit word that Gandhi coined in 1920 meaning peace with persistance; it was the essence of Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance that liberated India]. Christ was the “Prince of satyagrahis,” according to Gandhi. Gandhi wrote in his autobiography, “It was the New Testament which really awakened me to the value of passive resistance. When I read in the Sermon on the Mount such passages such as, ‘Resist not him that is evil: he who smiteth thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also, and love your enemies, pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your Father which is in heaven’, I was overjoyed.”

People who understand history need to make an important distinction between the Bible and the Qur’an: whereas the Bible was written by more than forty authors over more than 1,500 years in a period of progressively unfolding divine revelation, the Qur’an was written by and within the lifetime of one single man. In the case of the Bible, God inaugurated a covenant and in the context of that covenant promised that He would inaugurate a NEW covenant – which He did in the Person and work of His Son Jesus Christ in fulfillment of the old covenant. And that is why when Christians read the Old Testament, they know that they are NOT to interpret the Old Testament passages calling for divinely-sanctioned violence in a literal way – but ONLY in a spiritual context as that same Jesus Christ taught us. Whereas in the case of the Qur’an a man who committed savage acts of violence and even acts of outright genocide gives the same commands calling for divinely-sanctioned violence – and there is simply no avoiding the fact that Muhammad demanded, “Kill the enemies of Islam even as I taught you how to kill the enemies of Islam.”

To argue that there is any form of moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam when it comes to violence is simply not only fallacious but in fact asinine.

The second distinction that I shall proceed to make is the one between Islam (and Judaism) as a temporal and geographically-bound religion versus Christianity.

Muslims have have always had Mecca. Jews have always had Jerusalem – which became a problem when Muslims decided to also take over Jerusalem. What do Christians have? Heaven.

Christians do not have a “Promised Land.” There is no geographical location where Christians are promised a reward for occupying.

Thus, to the extent that CATHOLIC (not Protestant) Christians were to blame for the Crusades, it was in this confusion of trying to make “the Holy Land” some kind of “Kingdom of God on earth.” It is a place of great historical significance where many historic events happened, but it is NOT the Christians’ “kingdom.” It never was.

Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. It always has, and it always will. And any Christian who tries to take it from the Jews is committing a sin, not a holy act.

The reward of Christians is IN Christ and THROUGH Christ and WITH Christ. There is no place on this earth that compares to His significance or to His glory.

This is the dilemma for Islam: it IS a militant religion. It seizes and conquers by force, just as Muhammad taught and practiced.

Within one hundred years of the death of Muhammad, the armies of Islam had poured across Christian Europe and Africa. Charles Martel – also known as Charles the Hammer – stopped the vast Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in France on the other side of the continent. They also put to the sword everyone who would not embrace Allah in the very seat from which St. Augustine had taught in Africa. They poured into Spain by the sword, ultimately to be stopped by El Cid.

Today, not dozens, not hundreds, not thousands, BUT MILLIONS of Muslims demand that Israel be wiped off the map and that Jerusalem be taken by force in the name of Islam.

For the record, I have never heard voices, nor heard a prophet, nor read it in my Bible, to seize Mecca in the name of Christ.

Osama bin Laden routinely called Christians “Crusaders,” but the sick fact was that no one was more of a “Crusader” in the pejorative sense of the word than he was; he went on a “Crusade” that brought him to New York City where he imposed his religion on nearly three thousand innocent Americans who had nothing to do with him or his “Crusade.”

My challenge for Muslims who acknowledge that Osama bin Laden does not speak for them, or for Islam, is to truly repudiate him IN PUBLIC IN FRONT OF OTHER MUSLIMS. And to not only do this, but to explain in religious terms using the Qur’an to explain why Osama bin Laden was an infidel or unbeliever. And why he is burning in hell right now for all eternity.

Because of the freedoms created by Christianity and recognized in Christendom, a Muslim is free to come to America and Europe and Spain and Africa and wave his Qur’an and preach that everyone should believe in Allah and that Muhammad is His prophet. When ONE BILLION MUSLIMS demand that any Christian be equally free to go into ANY Muslim land and wave their Bibles and preach that everyone should believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God as their Savior and Lord, only then will Muslims have a valid point in claiming that Islam is not a religion of terror.

JERUSALEM – An anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck a school bus in southern Israel Thursday, wounding two people, one of them critically, and prompting fierce Israeli retaliation that killed five Palestinians.

Israel unleashed airstrikes and tank fire against Hamas targets across the border. It was the heaviest assault on the coastal territory since a broad military offensive two years ago. Besides the dead, more than 30 Palestinians were wounded, said Palestinian health official Adham Abu Salmiya.

He said one of the dead was a 50-year-old civilian who was sitting outside his home when he was struck by tank fire. Three others were militants killed near the southern Gaza town of Rafah. The fifth man was a Hamas policeman.

The sudden outbreak of violence illustrated the fragile situation along the Israel-Gaza border, where small bouts of fighting can quickly escalate into heavy-scale warfare.

After two years of relative calm, tensions have been rising between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza over the past few weeks. For Israel, Thursday’s attack was the most serious of this period.

But it also laid the groundwork for a major strategic breakthrough. The Israeli military activated a new cutting-edge missile-defense system for the first time, saying that the Iron Dome scored a direct hit on an incoming Palestinian rocket.

The escalation has also spilled beyond Israel’s borders.

In the past month, Israel has intercepted a cargo ship that it said was carrying arms bound for Gaza, jailed an alleged Hamas rocket mastermind believed to have been captured in Ukraine and been accused of carrying out a mysterious airstrike that killed two people in Sudan. Israel has not commented on this week’s airstrike, but officials have said they believe Sudan is a transit point for arms bound for Gaza.

Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, ordered the army to respond quickly to the attack on the school bus and said he held the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza, responsible for the violence.

“We will respond until it will become clear that the Hamas fully understand that we cannot accept and we will not accept such events,” he said at a military base in southern Israel.

Hamas issued a rare claim of responsibility for the bus attack, saying it was in response to the killing of three of its leaders earlier in the week. Usually, smaller militant factions claim responsibility.

Palestinian officials said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was making calls to leaders in Egypt, Turkey and Qatar appealing for their intervention.

Israeli defense officials said the incident marked a significant moment that would warrant a severe response. But there were no immediate indications that the violence would devolve into all-out war.

Israeli medical services said the bus was nearly empty after dropping off school children and was carrying only the driver and a lone passenger at the time of the attack. A 16-year-old boy with a serious head wound was evacuated from the scene and undergoing surgery at a hospital. The driver was moderately wounded.

TV footage showed a yellow bus with its windows blown out and its rear charred.

Israeli President Shimon Peres condemned the attack from New York, where he was holding meetings at the United Nations.

“This is another example of Gaza becoming a terror state,” he said in a statement. “Hundreds of thousands of mothers and children in southern Israel cannot sleep quietly at night as a result of the rocket fire from Gaza.”

The American and British governments condemned the attack.

Israel usually responds with tough reprisals to Palestinian attacks. It launched an airstrike on a Hamas training facility in northern Gaza.

Later Thursday, Israeli aircraft and tanks attacked Hamas facilities in northern and central Gaza Strip. A tank shell also struck a fuel depot in northern Gaza, sending a plume of smoke above the area.

“Israel will not frighten us and will not terrorize us,” said Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan. “We call on the Arab masses and the Arab revolution to stand by the Palestinian people in Gaza and to urge their regimes and their governments to stop this escalation, which aims to create a new pool of blood in Gaza Strip and Israel should be held responsible for the consequences of this.”

The missile attack came hours after Israel carried out airstrikes against tunnels it says are used by militants to smuggle weapons under the Egyptian border and carry out attacks.

Hamas and other Gaza militants have fired thousands of projectiles toward southern Israel in previous years. Israel launched a massive offensive in late 2008 to counter the near-daily barrage.

Israel recently deployed its first system to defend its tanks from anti-tank missiles. As a result, Gaza militants may be turning the weapons on new targets, since the attack on the bus appears to be the first time such a missile has been fired at a civilian Israeli target.

The military said that after the missile attack, about 45 rockets and mortar shells were fired from Gaza toward Israel, including one that struck a home, causing damage but no injuries.

In a separate incident, Israel said it had arrested five Hamas militants in east Jerusalem and charged them in a pipe bomb attack that wounded a sanitation worker last month.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops rounded up dozens of Palestinian women overnight in a massive sweep as part of a search for the killer of five Israelis in a nearby settlement last month.

Residents in Awarta said that between 100 and 200 women were taken into custody and that Israeli troops took their fingerprints and DNA samples from them. By midafternoon, all the women were believed to have been released.

Israel has been carrying out arrests in Awarta since a young Israeli couple and three of their children were stabbed to death as they slept in their home in the neighboring Jewish settlement of Itamar.

___

Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Dalia Nammari in Ramallah, West Bank, and Ariel David in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.

The LORD (Jehovah), the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Living God, the Lord God Almighty who was, and is and is to come, is protecting Israel.

Islam is a religion of hatred. That “Islam” means “peace” is a lie of the devil; “Islam” means “submission”; as in submission by force.

Today, we see that the United Nations is immorally siding with the terrorist Muslims against democratic Israel. One day, the Bible teaches, the entire world will gather their forces in a valley called Armageddon (Rev 16:12-16). And they will say, “Come and let us wipe them out as a nation. Let the name of Israel be remembered no more” (Psalms 83:4).

And it will be Messiah Jesus, coming again as He promised as King of kings and as Lord of lords (Revelation 19:11-16).

The story that will begin with undying hate will end in unending beauty and glory:

“I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).

God is protecting Israel. The Jews are His covenant people, the apple of His eye (Zechariah 2:8). And one day soon Messiah Jesus will come to His own and this time finally be welcomed.

You touch Jewish children at the peril of your immortal souls, Muslims. One day soon you will be called upon to account for your evil.

And you stand against Israel at the peril of your souls, you “united” nations that likewise gather against her.

As for me and my house, we pray every single day for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6). We love and support Israel and we eagerly await the Jews’ embrace of the same Messiah that we also embrace as Savior and as Lord.

You often don’t hear the truth about a politician from his or her own lips. Politicians know how to cautiously craft their speech; they know how to distort, misrepresent, and flat-out lie. No, you often have to get the truth about a politician secondhand.

PREPARE for a new America: That’s the message that the Rev. Jesse Jackson conveyed to participants in the first World Policy Forum, held at this French lakeside resort last week.

He promised “fundamental changes” in US foreign policy – saying America must “heal wounds” it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the “arrogance of the Bush administration.”

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where “decades of putting Israel’s interests first” would end.

Jackson believes that, although “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

“Obama is about change,” Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. “And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it.”

Jackson warns that he isn’t an Obama confidant or adviser, “just a supporter.” But he adds that Obama has been “a neighbor or, better still, a member of the family.” Jackson’s son has been a close friend of Obama for years, and Jackson’s daughter went to school with Obama’s wife Michelle.

“We helped him start his career,” says Jackson. “And then we were always there to help him move ahead. He is the continuation of our struggle for justice not only for the black people but also for all those who have been wronged.”

In other words, the guy who has known Obama for years, known his family, and helped him get his start in politics says, “Be afraid, Jew: Obama is going to end your world in order to build a better one.”

France loves Obama. But Jews shouldn’t And Israelies certainly shouldn’t. You can’t trust him on his stand for Israel. He’ll say whatever he needs to say, and you won’t know what he really believes until he gets in power. To Jews he said, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” And then he turned right around and said to Arabs, “Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations.” You don’t know Barack Obama. But Jesse Jackson sure knows him.

By the way, France willingly participated in helping the Nazis round up Jews to feed into their Holocaust death machine. And it still has a great deal of Antisemitism to this day.

Last week I wrote an article titled, “Barack Obama Proclaimed As Messiah – The Beast Is Coming.” I conclude in that article: “The United States isn’t mentioned in Bible prophecy. Now we begin to see why: we wont’ matter because our economy will be in ruins. And we certainly won’t be the kind of nation that will be willing to come to Israel’s aid against the beast when they need us most.” Frankly, I didn’t realize that Barack Obama already had undeclared plans to undermine the Jewish state in order to advance his idea of a “new America” that will “fundamentally change its foreign policy” to “heal wounds” by cutting “Zionists” out of the picture.

Christians like myself view Jews as “God’s canary in the mine.” How a nation treats the Jews demonstrates its moral condition. As a nation blesses the Jews, God will bless that nation. And as a nation curses the Jews, God will curse them (eg., Genesis 12:3). But as I have already also written, Barack Obama would be President of God damn America. So it doesn’t surprise me at all to learn from a key longtime Obama confidant that Barack Hussein Obama would pursue a policy that would damn America.

It was primarily American Jews – greatly assisted by American Christians who believed the Bible – who helped conceive and lay the groundwork for a Jewish state in the land that God gave to Abraham and his descendants as an eternal possession (Genesis 17:8). The United States was the first nation to officially recognize the state of Israel. And the United States has been a better friend of Israel and the Jew than any nation in the history of the world. And the United States has been blessed as no other nation in the history of the world, I believe, as a direct result.

Barack Obama, the false messiah who would undermine this nation’s foundations and leave it a hollow shell by means of his disastrous policies, would sever that relationship of blessing and turn it unto divine cursing, according to a happy Jesse Jackson.

Let us not forget that Jeremiah Wright engaged in antisemitic rhetoric at Barack Obama’s church; and that Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church named vitriolic Antisemite Louis Farrakhan it’s Man of the Year; and that Barack Obama actually helped lead Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March. And then Louis Farrakhan in turn declares that Barack Obama is the messiah.

Campbell Brown wrote a commentary titled, “So what if Obama were a Muslim or an Arab?” I wrote an article titled “Why Islamic Extremists Support Democrats And Obama” without mentioning either Obama’s race or religion. With all due respects to Campbell Brown, if Barack Obama is elected President, we are going to very soon discover that worldviews matter. And Frank Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Louis Farrakhan, ACORN, and yes, Jesse Jackson ought to tell us that Barack Hussein Obama has a very radical worldview, indeed. He has simply been smart enough to conceal both his worldview and his agenda.

Barack Obama will bring monumental change, no question about it. Given the fact that if he is elected, he will likely have such an overwhelming majority under Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives and Harry Reid’s Senate that Republicans won’t be able to do anything about anything, Obama would likely have more power than any President in our lifetimes. There will be change like we have never seen.

It wasn’t too long ago that Barack Obama, wanting to sound tough, and not like a foreign-policy wuss, rattled the saber against Pakistan:

“I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges,” Obama said, “but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

it was a real ominous statement, and many conservatives jumped all over it: the man who would be willing to talk to enemies such as Iran and North Korea without preconditions was actually threatening to invade an ally like Pakistan.

It’s not very often that we get to see what would happen if a candidate for President’s foreign policy positions were actually put to the test (which is why a Barack Obama can talk so much smack in a campaign). But we get to see so following the aftermath of President Bush taking Obama’s cue:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The furor intensified Friday over Washington’s decision to pursue Islamic militant targets inside Pakistan, with opposition lawmakers threatening that the country could pull out of the war on terror if the United States refuses to respect its borders.

“Sen. John McCain of Arizona, close to clinching the GOP nomination, called Sen. Barack Obama ‘naive’ today and…blasted him for advocating a bombing of Al Qaeda hide-outs in Pakistan,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“The best idea is not to broadcast what you’re going to do, that’s naive,” said McCain, who also questioned the very notion of “bombing Pakistan without their permission.” …

So here’s a pair of George Bush’s pants that YOU get to wear all by yourself, Mr. Barack Hussein – or should I say, Mr. Barry Bush?

This episode adds to Obama’s asinine policy of speaking to dictators without preconditions (which even Obama’s Democratic rivals for President ridiculed), his being totally wrong on the troop surge in Iraq (and then scrubbing his website in hopes that the public would forget just how wrong he was), his being for a Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel until he was against it, and his offering of moral equivalency in place of clear condemnation over Russia’s invasion of Democratic Georgia.

Sorry if I have to be the one to tell you this, but anybody looking for judgment in their President should be looking at John McCain.

It is ironically appropriate that Jimmy Carter will be one of the first speakers to address the Democratic National Convention. The worst President in recent American history should be present to pass on the baton of naive incompetence to his successor.

A Newsmax article, appropriately titled, “Jimmy Carter’s Trail of Disaster,” underscores just how colossal a failure Jimmy Carter has been in foreign policy for years. But nowhere was that failure more costly or pathetic than his failure on Iran. Christopher Ruddy writes:

The media would have us forget Jimmy Carter’s presidential record.

But I won’t.

Remember Carter’s human rights program, where he demanded the Shah of Iran step down and turn over power to the Ayatollah Khomeini?

No matter that Khomeini was a madman. Carter had the U.S. Pentagon tell the Shah’s top military commanders – about 150 of them – to acquiesce to the Ayatollah and not fight him.

The Shah’s military listened to Carter. All of them were murdered in one of the Ayatollah’s first acts.

By allowing the Shah to fall, Carter created one of the most militant anti-American dictatorships ever.

Soon the new Iranian government was ransacking our embassy and held hostage its staff for over a year. Only President Reagan’s election gave Iran the impetus to release the hostages.

The man who will be addressing the Democratic National Convention personally presided over the abandonment of an Iranian government that had been America’s strongest ally in the Middle East under the Shah and actually enabled its transformation into America’s greatest enemy in the Middle East under the Ayatollah.

When Jimmy Carter speaks, don’t bother listening to any of his pseudo-humanitarian blather. Think rather of the similarities between the failure Jimmy Carter and the failure-waiting-to-happen Barack Obama.

Think of how Barack Obama has already demonstrated an astonishing failure of naiveté and ignorance when he said that “Iran does not pose a serious threat to us.” And that “If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

We have seen Barack Obama issue horrible double-minded statements that reveal both frightening weakness and indecisiveness. Obama said that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel to Jewish groups, and then said to Palestinians that the issue of Jerusalem would be subject to negotiation. Jerusalem is the hottest, most easily-ignitable flash point in the history of the world; you simply DO NOT commit such massive blunders with this piece of real estate. Obama’s indecision and pandering weakness on Jerusalem reveals exactly the sort of man who would ignorantly empower our worst enemies and then indecisively sit on his hands while they made us look like fools, as Carter did with Iran before and after the Ayatollah seized our embassy and held Americans as hostages.

The similarity between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama does not end with naiveté and indecisiveness. It extends into their philosophy.

Both men have exhibited a degree of moral equivalence that prevents them from seeing the difference between the good and the evil.

I don’t consider… I wasn’t equating the Palestinian missiles with terrorism. But when the Palestinians commit terrorist acts, and I mean when a person blows himself up within a bus full of civilians, or when the target of the operation is women and children – such acts create a rejection of the Palestinians among those who care about them. It turns the world away from sympathy and support for the Palestinian people. That’s why I said that acts of terrorism like I just described are suicidal for the popularity and support for the Palestinian cause. In my book, I talk about violence from both sides, and I describe very carefully and accurately the number of casualties among Palestinians and Israelis, including children. The number of Palestinian children who died because of the violence is five times greater than the number of Israeli children, and I condemn this kind of violence on both sides.

Carter was forced to apologize for what he claimed were misconstrued statements. But Alan Dershowitz has come to see two Carters – what he calls the “Brandeis Carter” who says the right things in democratic forums, and the “Al Jazeera Carter” who makes shocking statements about the state of Israel.

The very title of Jimmy Carter’s book – Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid – reveals not only an incipient antisemitism, with Israel depicted as an apartheid (and therefore racist and illegitimate) state, but also a shocking degree of moral equivalence.

Several years ago, my young nephew believed that he was the most magnificent thing that ever happened.

He was Superman.

His family went from encouraging his self-esteem to trying to take him down a notch.

But for a while, there was no taking him down a notch. His sense of himself was so full that no failure or defeat could reach him. It didn’t matter if you caught him a thousand times, he still genuinely believed that he was faster than you.

That’s kind of where Barack Obama is, methinks.

He says that – unlike George Bush and the other candidates for president, he would pursue unconditional talks with leaders of rogue regimes. As time passed, Obama proceeded to tack on so many stipulations to his “precondition-free” talks that his policy was no different than anyone else’s.

But he still claimed his policy was better.

Obama said that Iran wasn’t a serious threat to the United States, but was forced as the sheer ridiculousness of his position was revealed to acknowledge that it was in fact “a grave threat.”

But he still maintained his position never changed, and he had been right along.

The pattern continues merrily along: when Russia invaded Georgia, Barack Obama offered a neutral, insipid statement calling for both sides to restrain themselves. John McCain immediately issued a sharply-worded message that condemned the Russian invasion of a democratic government and ally. As the days, the war, and the death and destruction, dragged on, Obama began to issue increasing criticism of Russia (you know, like McCain had immediately done). McCain appeared prescient; Obama appeared ignorant.

Obama adviser Susan Rice, appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball” Tuesday night, accused McCain of responding irresponsibly. “Barack Obama, the administration and the NATO allies took a measured, reasoned approach,” she said. “We were dealing with the facts as we knew them. John McCain shot from the hip, very aggressive, belligerent statement. He may or may not have complicated the situation.”

In other words, McCain should have taken “the nuanced” and “measured” initial position Obama did and call on Georgia to “restrain” itself as Russian tanks started rolling through its streets.

John McCain “shot from the hip” with a “very aggressive, belligerent statement” that “may (or may not) have complicated the situation”? When McCain’s assessment was right-on target and Obama’s was pathetically weak?

It’s really no different than that little arrogant punk kid who can’t admit he got beat claiming that his opponent somehow cheated.

America needs to take a long, hard look at Barack Obama and conclude that it needs an experienced adult to make good decisions – not a pretentious child who is pathologically incapable of dealing with his limitations and inadequacies.